“The past is carried to us on simple things- a written page, a spoon, a glove, a bowl of water: carried by the souls who touched them, those plain relics emanate a language freed of time, a language without cadence - mute and eerie as the sound a granite planet makes giving birth to mountains, coursing its way through space.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and those are some lines from Marianne Wiggins’ novel Properties of Thirst. The story revolves around the Rhodes family: Rocky, the father, still mourning the loss of his wife Lou after twenty years, memories of Lou, a French cook and physician, Cass, Rocky’s twin sister who moved in to help with the children, Sunny his daughter who has spent her life fascinated with fine food and Stryker, her twin brother who died at Pearl Harbor. They live in a mansion Rocky built for Lou that sits on the edge of Manzanar. A fifth main character is Schiff, the Department of Interior man assigned to build the Japanese internment camp who becomes involved with the Rhodes family.
This book is one of those rare gems...beautifully written with effortless descriptive passages and unique characters set in a dark period of our country’s history. Here’s one of Lou’s recipe cards that Sunny found, “Recipe for Love. Human plus Human plus O. , O the circle of life. Know yourself. Find another. Add water. Dissolve in starlight. Bring to a boil. Let simmer.”
In the Afterword I learned that the author suffered a massive stroke before she finished the book. It was only through several years of therapy and aid from her daughter and another friend that the novel was finished.
If you’re looking for that one amazing book to read this year, then you must read Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins.
